Word: diem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...otherwise it might destroy all of the gains against Communism in South Viet Nam. It is the decision of the provisional Legislative Council to authorize new citizens of Chinese origin to stand for provincial councils and for Parliament only five years after acquiring Vietnamese citizenship. Under Ngo Dinh Diem's regime, the Chinese here were at first prevented from practicing dozens of professions. Such a prohibition was soon neutralized by a decision to give masses of them Vietnamese citizenship, thus making deeper and steadier Chinese control over the Viet Nam economy. There is no proof of the devotion...
...bitter lesson in the first rule of journalism (as true in International politics as in University affairs): All officials distort if necessary in order to defend decisions they have made. To defend the decision to stick with Diem, embassy, CIA, and military officials reported to Washington a wrongly optimistic picture of the state...
This vice infected all three branches of the American mission in Vietnam. Junior officials in the field reported the situation as they saw it. Senior officials in Saigon more committed to Diem revised, sanitized, and in some cases buried their dispatches completely. Dissenting officers did not get to talk with visiting brass not have their views heard when they returned to Washington...
...wasn't until the arrival of Ambassador Lodge, who was not tied to backing Diem, that any other view started flowing to Washington from Saigon. Any other, that is, except for the reporters'. In touch withe the American field advisors, they were calling them as they saw them. When Time magazine disregarded the reports of its two men and attacked the journalists for not following the Time and American line, they resigned...
Does the book tell us anything about what policy we should be following now? Its strong point is an excellent analysis of the weakness of the Diem regime and its effect on our inability to win the war. That, of course, no longer applies...